Sure. But what defines the final showdown is that it is the last one. If the villain antagonist wins, it’s not the final showdown, just a showdown we wrongly expected to be final. Any showdown can be that. So we can lose as many times as the plot wants. And the finale of an addon doesn’t have to be the final showdown with its villain.
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I wish we lost but I wouldn’t like to leave Shadowlands in this state. A scenario where we just leave with the tail between our legs, knowing our eternity is going to be poop, is not a fun prospective.
All stories come to an end eventually, and if the villain and hero just continue to fight, the story eventually becomes dull and boring.
There will always be a protagonist and an antagonist in such a story, and eventually the protagonist defeats the antagonist. There might be a “main” antagonist that hovers in the peripheral and shows up in a cloud an fanfare as the actual antagonist, but even that device needs to be used sparingly.
Any story will eventually take on a life of its own, and it’s important that the pacing of the story doesn’t become repetitive. Which means that there will always be a final conclusion, and square off between the hero and villain. It’s inevitable, it can’t go on forever.
And this thread is about it not being at the end point of one specific addon. Yes, no matter what viallain we are talking about, they shouldn’t overstay their welcome in the narrative glances towards Sylvanas, but no, there is no reason we have to stop them before they actually have a relevant triumph that ends their main addon.
The way Blizzard writes their villains, it’s pretty much an all in situation. We either win or the villain destroys the whole world. So we have to defeat that villain, because the world cannot end.
Just look at the end of Legion, we have heard so much about Sargeras, and he’s pretty much the centre of Warcraft lore, written so powerful that in the end we just had to defeat a tortured World Soul instead, and have Sargeras imprisoned. Because it would be impossible for us to square off against him, and should he win he would destroy Azeroth.
That’s WoW main villains for you, destroying the world we live in, giving us no other choice but to defeat them. Defeat isn’t an option in that setup the way Blizzard write it.
That’s why my example was WoD. Yes, it was about global destruction. Of an alternate world. We could well lose without too many repercussions, and considering Legion was round the corner, having Archimonde there wouldn’t exactly have been out of place. Before that we had Garrosh. Would the world have been destroyed if he prevailed? Not exactly, no. TBCs big finale was the chance of the Legion returning… well, I think Legion proved that that can be a viable premise for an addon. Other players described the N’zoth win-scenarios they would have liked to see in this thread, and I don’t think they are necessarily worse than what we got. Not every villain we had was about to end the universe, or even Azeroth. And being unable to imagine them succeeding just sounds like lack of imagination or lack of thought to me.
The villains we have had in the Warcraft world however have always been world ending. The Horde in Warcraft 1 and 2 was basically just Legion invasion preparation, in Warcraft 3 the destruction of the World Tree would have had devastating effects on Azeroth, and the Lich King would have made the entire world like Tirisfal and Silverpine. In fact only time we didn’t have a “Azeroth will be destroyed” scenario was in Classic, TBC and WoD. Though in Classic it can be argued that both the Naxxramas and the AQ patch, were a “this might destroy the world” scenario, though not as glaringly obvious as other expansions.
Blizzard just have to write an all in or nothing in their story where everything is at stake. Yes they could destroy Azeroth at the same as with Draenor but, they’ve already done that with Draenor and Argus. And with the Void Lords, chances are we’re getting another destroyed of the world and / or the universe, which we again will defeat because why not.
…are you even readinng what I am writing? The addon-bosses often as not aren’t. And that’s what we’re talking about. Ending an expansion on a major loss that shapes the following addon.
Lich King: World ending
Deathwing: World ending
Garrosh: World Ending
Sargeras: World Ending
N’Zoth: World Ending
My point here is that the way it is written, there is no option for major loss. Don’t get me wrong, it would have been interesting to have a story where not everything went smoothly. But then they need to write villains that aren’t world ending in their goals. We sort of need Azeroth to stand on when doing our hero stuff.
They would have to shift away from ending the world to just conquering it. I don’t know why but they seem to have to go the Anime way with their story writing, all powerful beings that are so powerful that when their powers are unleashed they destroy the world. That’s just poor writing in my book, a good villain doesn’t have to be the most powerful one. Look at Lex Luthor, he’s not more powerful than Superman but he’s extremely clever and resourceful, which makes him a good villain without being over the top.
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We don’t actually fully know what the Jailer wants.
The stakes are as high as the story want them to be, maybe the Jailor is not that bad, he just doesn’t like how things work currently and also have his vengeance, maybe things weren’t that bad before the current system.
Maybe we lose and take a few cool old characters from wow like Kael’thas and lady Vashj and so on…and we escape back to Azeroth and here we see the new ‘‘expansion story’’(hopefully a full revamp of Azeroth and the new expansion threat area).
Maybe even the Denathrius&Co. story makes him a regular villain in the lore proceeding with his old agenda.
It would just be nice to leave with our tail between our legs for once.
Garrosh and Nzoth where not world ending their goals they wanted to conquer the world for their own ends.
Had Nzoth won he would have ressurected the Black empire to rule Azeroth.
We could have lost to Nzoth and then spent years trying to free Azeroth from the grip of the Old Golds and then rebuilding the planet
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Garrosh was under the influence of an Old God, it would be pretty much world ending had he brought it forth into the world. They both would have brought forth The black Empire, which would pretty much mean the end of the world for us.
It took the Titanforged armies of the Pantheon to eventually get rid of the Black Empire. We don’t stand a chance at all against the Old Gods in their might. The only reason we can content with the Old Gods in WoW, is because their powers have been severely restricted by their imprisonment. Both C’Thun and Yogg-Sarron would completely demolish us if they had their full potential at hand, as would N’Zoth, and he’s considered the weakest of the lot.
That’s the problem with Blizzard’s writing, they make characters that are so immensely powerful that it takes and equally powerful being to destroy them. They can’t let us lose, simply because how powerful those beings are. If those beings win, it will end it.
I don’t mind the idea to loosing against the Jailer. If and only they actually develop him.
Right now he’s just the big spooky unconditional baddy. If they take the opportunity to actually give a great back story, and a valid point for wanting to achieve his goals beyond “death comes for the soul of your wooooorld BoOOooOooOOooooo” then great!
Either way I hope it will be the last we hear of Sylvanas though. Not being against or pro her, just tired of everything revolving around contradictions and retcons.
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Too late for that, as far as I’m concerned. The Jailer is such a generic, uninspired villain imo, I don’t even care enough about him to want to kill him, let alone that I’m interested in his motivations.
It’s insulting enough that they’re trying to sell us this clown as the great mastermind behind practically everything. I just want to be rid of him as soon as possible.
Losing to N’zoth could have been interesting. Alas-
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The only interesting thing i’ve actually found out personally of the Jailer so far is that the new hand moutns are intrinsically tied to some kind of power struggle versus him and some kind of giant sect? race? w/e…
There might be more about it, but I wish they could expand on things like this. Give the Jailer -something- beyond just… whatever he has in mind behind that apparently great big brain of his.
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True and that would have made an interesting expansion fighting against a foe that we cannot defeat in direct confrontation.
We can’t defeat the Old Gods fully empowered but be can find a way to reseal them.
That is how i would have envisioned an expansion dealing with a resurected Black empire.
It would be wrong to lose to some noname villain like Jailer.
It would have been more meaningful and impactful to lose to N’Zoth or Legion.
Both N’zoth and Legion had established connection to Azeroth and shared history that wasn’t pushed as some meta writing like all this shadowlands crap that we see now.
And another thing, defeat in game should be written with good amount of skill and care. It should serve some purpose. For example in other MMO - SWTOR you as player may experience defeat trough the story. It is well established, written and acted via good voice actors who performed their characters the best they could because of talent, good writings for these characters and exceptional work of sound/voice directors.
Right now, in Shadowlands we have two major Villian figures - Jailer and Sylvanas.
- Jailer is just boring dude, with lackluster backstory, zero original connections with Azeroth, us and Warcraft universe as a whole. He is a wheelchair villain that heavily relies on things of the past(AKA scourge, dreadlords and Arthas), to look menacing and somewhat threatening.
- Sylvanas is just written bad as a villian or antihero, she was already greately overused (well as many other characters in WoW - yes i look at you Jaina, Anduin, Nathanos). She is litteraly has been Merry Sued in terms of powers, and despite her being written as cunning, and smart person, she was not able to see truth about Jailer, Arthas from the miles away. And the fact that in order to “understand” her we need to read several books, and see her story in several expanions in the row clearly indicates that writing of this charcter is not at the level this character requires to pull off story developers want to tell about her.
Here in Shadowlands we experienced some defeat - like defending of ardenveald when Anduin took sigil in cutscene, and we didn’t felt anything for this.
This act was not well directed, acted or established - we just have been told that we lose despite us being triumphant in gameplay term.
Right now, with current WoW developers like Ion, Steve Danuser and others, such story arc as defeat is literally impossible, because they lack of skills and talents to pull this off.
Hm… if we consider the later additions to the story in SWTOR I disagree. When you go up against Arcann you have to win the fight to lose it. If you actually lose it you have to try again until you win – so that you can lose it. I think players are used to this method of storytelling nowadays but that may be because they haven’t experienced the alternative.
In Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast you go up against the main bad guy relatively early in the game. You are not a Jedi and have no force powers and you go up against a Sith. It is a fight you cannot win and this is emphasised in the gameplay. The bad guy will throw you around and shoot lightnings at you and you will have no defense. When your health reaches zero that’s when the cutscene kicks in. You lost, not just because of the whims and wishes of the narrative but you actually lost in the game. And this loss makes the final confrontation all the more satisfying because then you will have the means to defend yourself from the bad guy’s supernatural attacks.
But as a whole I agree. Dealing with narrative loss in a story where players have had a constant streak of victories can be difficult, but not impossible. And it could lead to some really interesting narratives. XCOM 2 builds on the idea that the player lost the first game and this decision was based on the data they gathered from the Ironman runs of the first game; the vast majority of players did fail the game. And the setting for XCOM 2 ended up being really interesting.
And it is an interesting topic but I don’t think WoW has a lot of stuff left to explore that is interesting. And the writers haven’t done a very good job and may have taken one too many liberties with the fantasy of the world.
We have already lost. There is no way to recover at this point from such atrocious writing, destroying lore and characters.
Unless they do an “all of Shadowlands was a dream”, which is a really stupid plot device, but at this point, even that would be preferable.
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Ok the story reached its peak of dumbness…
That’s another reason to lose to the Jailer, he can remake reality! Maybe he can redo WoW… completely revamp story and old zones.
Using Azeroth’s soul he can employ decent story writers and remake everything 
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